Britbike forum Forums British Motorcycle specific Brands Bsa bulletin board Lugs!

So ...... following my escapades with minor infernos I have just about decided to strip the bike and repaint the frame,
When I built this one, I never intended to go as far as I did, so consequently the frame paint job did not get the attention it should have.

So if I am going to repaint the frame I might as well deal with two issues.

1) the side stand lug has been well munted, snapped, and "repaired" by welding on a nut. Idealy I would like to remove the whole lug, back to the frame tube and fit a nice clamp on side stand I got from Ebay.
Has anyone had experience of doing this? i.e. cutting off the lug without destroying the frame?

2) More of interests really ....... on the down tube there are the remnants of tubes that have been welded on (about level with the head), one on each side, then clumsily cut off. Any idea what they could have been?

A clamp on stand won't work as the force applied is trying to rotate the clamp around the tube

Norton P-11 bikes were notorious for the side stand lug breathing off the frame, often the first day the rider used the stand.

The solution was a piece of flat steel, the width of the distance across the bottom frame rails, plus a few inches.
The new side stand mount was made by a bend of the desired angle at the left end of that steel bar, drilled for the side stand.

This entire unit was held to the frame by a U-bold clamped around each frame tube.
CRUDE, maybe, but it worked, and no welding was involved.

"A clamp on stand won't work as the force applied is trying to rotate the clamp around the tube"

I understand your point but 1) I doubt it, I am pretty sure the engineers had thought about that one, and 2) I had planned on bronzing the thing on as well.

My question remains, can you get the old fitting off the frame without wrecking the frame? space is limited down there.

How was it made in the first place? two halves wrapped around the tube and bronzed? A fitting slid down the tube before the tube was bent into a frame shape? some how else??

BTW it is on the 1967 B44R frame!

Which bike, B50?
On the OIF the cast lug is slipped on to the frame and welded. I think it is the same for the A65, although they are brazed. I cut through the welds on an OIF and pulled it off.

1967 B44 Duplex frame.

On a dry-frame A65, the sidestand lug is wrapped around the frame, but it doesn't go all the way around. It is/was brazed on. I had one break (of course), but it didn't break free from the frame, just the flat part broke from the wrap-around part. My welder just welded the flat part back to the wrap-around part, at the correct angle (I had a scrap frame to use as an example). It has held for many years, but no one sits on the bike anymore with the stand down (my ex-wife used to like to do that.)

if you want to totally remove the braze on lug there is a way. get a cut off wheel and slice through the lug until you just see the braze. cut all the way along the lug until it is all the way along. then heat it up and beat one side until it starts to peel off.. keep heating and beating the lug to make it unwind from the frame. as long as you don't melt the steel tube you are fine. bear in mind that you can not weld over braze, so whatever you put back there needs to be brazed, or welded in places where there was no braze

As I understand it, many BSA frames were brazed together, so if you want to remove the old lug, heating it and unpicking the braze would work together with cutting through the lug so it can be separated from the frame.

You can get "U" shaped replacement weld on side stand lugs for 1968 onwards BSA's see This Link. It doesnt say which BSA its for or what size frame, so you might need to adapt it and the side-stand itself.

There is also a fully machined lug intended for Triumph T140 frames 1-1/4 diameter, See this link, I guess this could be made to fit, the advert suggests cutting 1/3 from the lug so it could then be slipped over the frame and welded, without cutting the frame, again some adaptation of the side stand would be needed.

I used to have an A10 with a damaged half lug. I sawed, filed,drilled and bent a lump of 10mm steel and bolted it to the bottom middle engine mounting lug then fitted a triumph/bsa "long" side stand.
It folded up between the frame tubes and the tip peeped out under the pillion loop